August 5, 2011

Another Lesson - The Right Wing Attack Machine

Congressman Mike Doyle uses the "hostage/terrorist" metaphor and the right wing doesn't like it. The editorial board at the Tribune-Review gets the story wrong:

Lance: To U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills. No effort to "walk back" his inexcusable comparison of tea party members to "terrorists," uttered during a closed-door caucus meeting on Monday, can change the fact that he said what he meant and meant what he said -- or cover the gross ignorance of basic economics betrayed by tax-the-"rich" rhetoric he used in trying to contain the damage.

In reality, he wasn't talking about "tea party members" but the members of Congress who were (to extend the metaphor) using the economy as a hostage to get what they want politically.

Can I point out at this point that the very very conservative Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, approves of the tactic of political "hostage taking" for political gains? From the Washington Post:

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” [McConnell] said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”

Not "shooting" the hostage, of course. Just threatening to. But as they say, it's ok if you're a Republican and Mitch McConnell is a republican so it's OK to threaten to take the economy hostage - as long the political payoff is favorable to the Republicans.

For Congressman Doyle, however, the metaphor (even though they got it wrong) is "inexcusable."

But this is all set-up. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Look at what the Trib does in its editorial and how it does it. The second half of the braintrust's criticism of the Congressman's outburst come from Allegheny Institute for Public Policy's Jake Haulk.

The same Allegheny Institute for Public Policy that gets about 87% of its grant money from foundations controlled by Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.

This is how the right wing attack machine works. The Scaife-owned paper needed a quote to attack a political adversary and it conveniently found it at a Scaife-funded right wing think tank.

And there's never ever any mention of the millions Scaife's poured into the Allegheny Institute.